The Challenge in the Excruciatingly Long Hiatus
by AmandaFriend
Summary: Bonesology challenges and here is an answer. Unconnected stories of love, triumph, happiness, cats and other mindless fluff I can cobble together. Most of the gang will find their way into these vignettes. Enjoy!
1. Blessing

**The Challenge in the Hiatus**

_**Note: I don't own Bones. This is done out of love for the show and hatred of the hiatus. **_

**30\. Blessing**

He looked past his own steepled fingers toward the clenched fist of his daughter, her own eyes squeezed shut as she was putting a great deal of effort into the **blessing** of their Sunday brunch.

Across from him, the resident atheist was waiting patiently for a break in the prayer to signal that it was okay to dive in.

But Christine was taking this seriously—_very seriously_—as the short prayer he had made over the meal, a simple Twitter-like blessing meant to assuage the non-believer wife and his _I'm-going-to-make-her-a-believer-if-it-kills-me_ daughter was now turning into a blog post of sorts.

"Psst, Christine," he tried, Bones beginning to look like she was going to break her vow not to interfere, "God probably already heard you."

But his daughter remained frozen in a state of prayer, her fingers folded together, her eyes clenched shut, and her mouth chewing on whatever concept she was communicating with God.

He gave her a couple more minutes, but even his stomach was protesting the interruption in the regularly scheduled Sunday meal when Bones mouthed something which he took to be, "Does it always take this long to talk to your mythical being?"

He reached out. "Christine, honey, baby, love of my life," he whispered across the table, his eyes nervously glancing at Bones who had been gracious about Sunday mass and saying grace as long as it was only on Sunday and special occasions, but her goodwill was running a bit thin. "Christine, baby, you pray before the meal. And then you eat."

The eyes had it. . . they were tighter than Cams' wallet these days.

"Christine, honey," he said avoiding Bones, "the food is getting cold. And we're having your favorites. . . ." He listed everything on the meal hoping to find a winner. Bones started to say something, something that started off with "Anthropologically . . ." and he knew he was losing the battle. "Christine, your mommy really has to eat, honey, because she's pregnant and eating for two people and that requires that she eat an additional 300 calories. . . ."

The eyes popped open.

He sat back, pleased that he could keep her budding interest in religion alive without throwing off the balance of a nice Sunday. . . .

"Does God give you what you ask for?"

Luckily Bones was already chewing away on something which gave him a chance to chew on this with his daughter. "God grants us those things that he thinks we need."

"Even if I pray really hard?"

"Yes, even if you pray really hard."

His little genius was looking a bit put out by that, so he tried to soften the truth.

"God grants us what he thinks we need, but he puts a lot of effort into those things we ask for when they're for other people."

"It is not rational for a mytho. . . ."

"_Bones!"_

His wife gave him the look, the tilt of the head, the pursed lips, the whole scornful schoolteacher look that sometimes could be a real turn-on, but right now wasn't helping his side.

"When we ask things for other people, that means we're being slefless and God likes that."

"Like asking Him for Mommy to be healthy during this pregnancy?"

He shot a look at Bones. Okay, he was gloating a bit.

"That's a very sweet thing to ask for. I know Mommy appreciates it."

He could see Bones was touched by the gesture. So was he. Hell. . . strike that, heck, his little girl was learning to think of others. This religion thing had something.

Okay, now he really was gloating.

"Because it's self-lesh?"

"Self-_less_. Unselfish. Generous." He was going to pile on the adjectives before Bones got a chance to. "It's really a very nice thing to do for someone you love and who loves you."

Point for Sunday church and God, he thought. Booth one, Bones nothing. He shot his wife a grin.

"Is it all right that I pray for a baby brother?"

Oh, he was on a roll. They already knew the sex of their kid and if she was praying for a baby brother then she would think. . . .

"Uh-hem."

Bones was giving him that look again and he knew she was reading his mind even if she would tell him later that that was impossible. He straightened.

"Yes, honey. You can pray to God to keep Mommy healthy and to have a healthy baby brother." It might be unfair, but he and God and the sonogram were winning this little crusade. He grinned again toward Bones who was giving him a look of caution.

"So, you asked God to keep Mommy healthy and to have a healthy baby brother." He felt great. "What's wrong with that?"

How could Bones argue against anything that taught their kid selfless devotion to the needs of others?

"I asked God for a healthy Mommy, and a healthy baby brother. . . ," Christine repeated.

He smiled at Bones, triumphant.

". . .As long as he's a puppy."

**Author's note: **Bonesology puts out a challenge and I, like the fool I am, will answer. However, I will not write a connected story like _The Lies in the Truth_ because that one makes my head hurt sometimes. I first saw the challenge here with _FaithinBones_ and I'm throwing my two cents in as well if only to help pass the time. Because I can start any ol' where I want to on the list, I'm going to start low with the hope that I can get through a few stories at least without making this last until five years after Bones reaches its 500th episode. I am a slow writer who tends to write in spurts and I probably won't be doing a chapter a day. Sorry.

If this is crap and you don't want me to continue, just don't review.


	2. Share

**41\. Share**

There it was—_the phone_.

For days after the revelation that Brennan had an incriminatingly sexy picture of a naked Booth cooking breakfast, she'd been almost obsessed in her desire to see it.

_It._

As she stood contemplating the phone on Brennan's desk, she wondered what it was she really needed to see.

_It. You know, IT. _

_All right, all right,_ her inner voice was saying. _She was an artist who had taken a detour into a science lab and got to see the inside of people and often had the task of putting the outsides back onto that skeleton in order to identify the person and_ _had a natural and professional curiosity about such things. _

It would be relatively easy to simply take the phone, go back to her office and use her computer to unlock the code. Hell, there were only 24 possible combinations and given just how focused Brennan could be—even as pregnant as she was—how long could it really take to run through the combinations, open up the phone and peruse the photo?

_The Photo. _

Her hand, so used to holding a stylus, paintbrush or pencil, practically needed something to hold, to wield as an instrument. Why not Brennan's phone?

_More than a little creepy,_ her inner voice admonished her. _It's clear you want to look, to see Booth's physique in the flesh—well a bit more flesh than that roll through in the lab that one Christmas—broad muscular shoulders tapering down into a trim, tight waist, firm buttocks, hips that . . . . Wait!_

It wasn't as if she were alone in the curiosity. She had seen any number of the lab techs, female and male, checking out Booth, checking out the pure maleness of him, the chiseled physique that couldn't be easily hidden. And when he came into the lab whether dressed in a t-shirt and jeans or his FBI-uniform-like suit and tie, didn't their eyes travel downward until they reached the promised land?

She found her fingers wrapped around the phone, found her heart racing, her prurient interest warring with the sisterhood she and Brennan had forged over the years.

And then there was Hodgins.

She had this great guy, a wonderful guy, sweet and warm and sexy as hell and loving and satisfying and just so incredibly hot. He was a friend and a lover and a colleague and a father to her child and it did not matter what order she listed her relationship with him, they were somehow always going to be together because their love was that strong.

So why was she obsessed with looking at a naked picture of Booth?

Was it because Cam looked and now Brennan had a good look, a good long look that had finally, finally, FINALLY happened in one of the longest courtships in the history of time? Was she trying to keep up with the others? Or did she need proof—the Brennan kind of proof—that they were finally a couple?

Or did she just want to see what Brennan was getting? A wistful longing for what she had given up by getting married and settling down into one, long-term, till-death-we-do-part relationship with one man?

She let her fingers dance along the table, just close enough to the cell phone to accidentally touch it, to bring it to life, but far enough away to respect that invisible line that she and Brennan had.

Sisterhood.

She looked up, looked into the lab, wondered what Hodgins was doing, wondered why she couldn't stop thinking of him even as she was thinking about looking at that photo.

She'd asked Brennan to **share** the photo—it wasn't like she was asking to share the man. Granted, she had been kind of pushy and giggly like some teen fan girl drooling over the latest _Teen Beat_ hottie. _Did they even publish that rag anymore?_ Not a mature woman with a baby and a husband who adored her and a house and a life. . . .

_You are a hopeless teen fan girl juicing over some arm porn and chest porn and. . . ._

She silenced her inner critic, the one she knew would spell it out for her. Part of her could blame Booth, the man who wore the cocky belt buckle despite now having the woman he had wanted for years in his bed, having his child. He was advertising _it_, advertising something that was and should be Brennan's and Brennan's alone. But she worked in a field where the baser instincts led people to do abominable things and she'd seen far too many people mistake desire for entitlement.

People liked to look. Liked to imagine what certain people looked like when they were in the throes of ecstasy. Wasn't that the whole foundation of the porn industry? Didn't that sell tickets at the movie theaters, draw viewers to TV shows, cause women of all ages—and some men—to salivate over the latest hunk?

Okay, okay, she liked to look. Call it an artist's discerning eye or a woman's, she liked to look. Men like Booth were meant to catch your eye—he moved with a confidence and grace that was deeply sexy, deeply provocative.

_Just a peek. _ Her finger hovered over the screen when the cell trilled, startling her, doing a sidelong dance on the desk. AFBA came up on the screen, and even she knew enough to know that with initials like that it was official business. Letting the phone finish its dance, the cell beeping as it went to voicemail, she folded herself into one of the chairs facing the desk and contemplated the phone.

Anyone else might have simply stolen a look quickly, maybe even snapped a shot or forwarded the photo to be lusted over some more, but if she had been just anyone, wouldn't she have looked by now?

The phone sat there, waiting to be woken, but she couldn't do it. Brennan had earned a bit of playfulness with her FBI guy and he with her. She deserved only the best and Booth was pretty damned good.

And she had her own pretty damned good guy in Jack Hodgins. She knew exactly what resided under that lab coat, a man with his own powerful grace, well-toned and muscular, a giving lover, a generous friend, a hunk of a husband who treated her very well. And he was great with Michael Vincent, great with her whenever she lost her grounding and took to flights of idiocy or fancy and lost her way.

He was always there to help her find her way back to what really mattered.

"Angela?" Brennan stood at the doorway, her lab coat tented to accommodate her growing pregnancy. "Do you need something?"

"No," Angela said as she stood. "No, I have everything I need."

**Author's note:** Unlike many fans, I have no problem with Angela. (The name, AmandaFriend is drawn from the Brennan novels since Amanda is Kathy Reich's best friend in the novels. I love Brennan and figured it was a good _nom de plume_.) Granted, she's crossed the line (toed the line?) with Booth, but despite fan fiction stories that spell out other scenarios, the show is never going to show Angela and Booth together. Is she outrageous at times? Yes. Insensitive? Definitely. Far too flirty for her own good? No argument from me. But like all characters, she needs something that makes her a little edgy, abrasive even. From Booth through Aubrey, each one of them has features that make them a little (or a lot) unlikeable. It just so happens that Hodgins is so incredibly cool and loveable that his idiosyncrasies are neutralized. Angela? Not so much. Hodgins might be King of the Lab, but he's also King of many of our hearts and anyone who crosses him crosses us. Maybe we know a woman like Angela, a bit too flirty, a bit too nosey, a bit too teenie-bopperish and we can easily dismiss her, even dislike her. For whatever reason, like Jessica Rabbit, she's not bad, she's just drawn that way.

Just my humble opinion.


	3. Jealousy

**42\. Jealousy**

The sigh came out long and low.

Dr. Oliver Wells had that affect on people. Exceptionally brilliant and accomplished, an academic with multiple degrees and the boorishness to remind everyone of just how high his IQ soared above theirs, he had spent the morning out-dueling Daisy Wicks for superiority in the lab. If Hodgins was the self-titled King of the Lab, Wells was going for no less than God of the Lab, the Universe and Life Itself.

And his first subject that day had been the hapless Daisy.

There was that sigh again, tearing at her heart as she remembered who they had pulled Daisy away from to work with Dr. Know-It-All.

Seeley Lance Wick-Sweets. The name was a mouthful, certainly not something that rolled off the tongue, but it had the strength of a family that had loved his father and by extension loved him and his mother very much.

Watching Daisy on the platform, her heart couldn't help but go out to the poor woman.

"You send the children to separate corners?" Angela asked as she sidled up to her. "Or was Oliver being the playground bully again?"

"Sometimes I feel like I'm running a nursery school," she admitted. It had been Dr. Brennan who had separated the combatants, but she still felt the strain in the room between the enormous ego of Oliver trying to steamroll over Daisy's not-quite-as-inflated one.

Oh, Daisy had held her own, sparkling in her own way as they tried to identify the skeletons gracing the platform. A new tunnel into an old mine had unearthed a crew of miners lost over a hundred years ago and they were doing their best to put names to the remains.

Well, at least it seemed that Daisy and the rest of them were.

Dr. Oliver Wells had spent much of the morning reminding them of just how much this work—and the workers he had to deal with—was beneath him.

"Everyone deserves the dignity of having their name restored to them," Brennan had finally said before ordering the man to the Bone Room. "And we are the only ones capable of doing so."

The tone alone had been enough to silence Oliver.

So the children had been sent to their corners of the playground, Daisy on the platform, Oliver in the Bone Room and Brennan in the Autopsy Room trying to separate bone fragments into neat piles of what once had been humans before assigning them to the interns for reassembly.

The sharp chirp of a phone broke the quiet and Daisy looked up. "I have to go," she said, "Little Seeley Lance. . . ."

"Go," Angela ordered well before she could say anything to Daisy.

"Yes, go and do what you have to do," she agreed.

"You do know how much more efficient this would be if she could bring the baby here?" Angela asked as Daisy made her way from the lab.

"Yes, and then I'd definitely know I was running a nursery," Cam said.

oOo

Pieces of past lives were slowly coming together, the skeletons taking shape and faces being matched to names, a hundred years of sorrow relived as the families were contacted.

The waning afternoon had been quiet, the platform acting as the final staging area for the last six victims. Dr. Oliver as well as almost-Doctor Daisy Wicks were compiling the last of the reports while Dr. Brennan was applying dabs of Elmer's glue on the last shards of skull. Angela was photographing the finished skulls to enter into her computer for facial reconstructions. It had been, to Cam's mind, a professional calm where any offending observation by Dr. Wells was quickly checked by a laser stare from Dr. Brennan or pointed silence from Daisy.

Not quite perfect, but close enough as far as Cam could see.

Daisy's phone chirped, her lifeline to the littlest squint in the Jeffersonian nursery announced another need and as she had done much of the day, she silenced the phone, slid from her stool and began to leave the platform.

But it was just too much for Dr. Oliver Wells.

"You do know that this is the reason why women are considered to be less efficient in the workplace," he observed. "And it's probably why you haven't earned your first doctorate." 

Three pairs of eyes shot up from their work.

Daisy had made an abrupt U-turn and was now adding her glare.

"What?"

He used the metacarpal in his hand like a pointer. "You know, motherhood."

The dismissive tone only turned up the heat in the four pairs of eyes, each set belonging to a woman at some stage of motherhood.

Daisy took a step toward him. "Is it **jealousy**?"

"Jealousy?" he repeated. "I can assure you I am not envious of your lot."

"Our lot? Really?" She took another step forward and Cam wondered just how ugly this could get. "Really? Because I think you are jealous that each one of us has someone with which to share our lives. Each one of us has a child, another person that we are superiors to, but we have education and wisdom and life experience to share with that person and no need to prove our superiority constantly because we have a bond, a bond of love. You use your superior intellect and all of your degrees to feel good about yourself because you are missing the one thing that you really crave."

"Love." She gave him a good, long look. "I bet you can't curl up next to one of your degrees and feel loved."

Daisy's voice drenched with sympathy for the man had drowned any reply and she tossed her head, turned and marched off to be with her baby.

**Author's note: **_Thank you to all those who have reviewed or followed or favorited this series. I appreciate the feedback and welcome any suggestions. And please give Faithinbones a read as well. Thanks._


	4. Melody

** 44\. Melody**

She found it at Gilbert's, a palace of a used bookstore nestled off her usual route in an old 1920's department store. The main floor and work rooms had been turned into a labyrinth of book shelves that wound around the space to an old caged elevator in the back that reminded her of the one in Booth's old apartment building. An art deco motif inscribed the wrought iron railings on the stairs in the front that swept up to a second floor where overstuffed armchairs resided amid stacks of books.

Today she had little time to search the upper floor for hidden treasures, instead settling for a different hunt with Christine who practically raced to the children's room. She followed, stopping only once to scan the latest additions to the mystery section, making a mental note of how many copies of her Kathy Reichs' novels there were compared to those of Tess Brown's protagonist.

"Mommy?"

Christine had already found a couple of books to peruse, but by the end of their visit, Brennan would add a few more to the pile, a couple of science books that were well-illustrated and had mostly accurate information.

oOo

Booth probably would have argued that she didn't find it, that it found her, but he had romantic notions like that. She was standing with Christine waiting behind a man with a taste for spy novels and plumbing repair when she spotted the printed flyer on the corkboard by the counter. Amid the business cards for carpet cleaning and bankruptcy attorneys were the printed flyers advertising puppies for sale and apartments for rent. Nestled behind a flyer for a French provincial sofa and love seat and another for an old Buick Roadmaster was the one that really caught her eye. The fringe of phone numbers below it had remained largely untouched and she committed the number to memory.

She left her name and number on the voicemail when she got home.

At the new house, Christine retreated to her room to read while she unpacked. She had worked hard to get into the new house, worked hard to move past the red tape strung up on recovering things from the old house, worked hard to salvage what she could from the shell of the living room and kitchen. Angela had offered to help as had Sweets, but the very act of repairing some of the damage to their lives gave her some comfort.

It wasn't entirely rational.

She'd been shuffled between foster homes during her teens and even had several apartments before settling into her condo, so moving wasn't foreign to her, but decorating the new house without Booth felt somehow odd. It shouldn't, really. She knew these were merely possessions with an intrinsic value that was arbitrary at best. But these were more than just Booth's things or hers salvaged from the wreckage of the Mighty Hut.

Those things had become theirs.

oOo

The first strains of the **melody** hit her hard, a bit too hard really, and she backed up involuntarily.

"Not a fan of Cyndi Lauper?"

_"__. . . Oh mother dear we're not the fortunate ones. . . ."_

She steeled herself and stepped back to the juke box, listening for any sounds of the machine in distress as Lauper skipped through the anthem, the song once her own rallying cry, her mother's expression as she sang in the house replaced forever by the face of a dying Booth in her arms.

"You okay?" the man asked as the record stopped and the machine whirred down.

"Yes," she said hurriedly. "Do you have something slower, softer?"

The man must have interpreted her request for something romantic, and she recognized the strains of the instrumental as one that she and Booth had danced to as part of that undercover operation. Simply closing her eyes, she could almost feel Booth holding her, his strength guiding them across the dance floor, the steps sure and true. She missed him, was frightened every day that she would get call from the prison that something had happened to him.

She fought the urge to cry.

"Knew there would be one on here that you'd like," the man said.

"There's a one in 160 chance that there would be a song I like."

He seemed to be amused by that. "I like to call it fate."

"I don't believe in fate," she countered.

Then he punched in another set of numbers and she watched as the record was moved into position, the opening rhythm as familiar as her own heartbeat.

_"Well, I'm hot-blooded, check it and see. . . ."_

oOo

She turned on the jukebox after the movers had left, watched as the lights came on to a soft murmur deep within the machine. There were songs here that Booth had mentioned over the years, tunes that they had listened to together, bands they had yet to enjoy as a couple. She was making a mental list of songs she would like to add when Christine came up beside her.

"Will you bring Daddy the song I sang for him?"

"Yes, sweetheart."

Christine's hand played along the buttons, caressed the smooth gold-tone frame around them.

"Is this a present for Daddy?"

"Yes," Brennan said. "Yes it is."


	5. Clouds

**45\. Clouds**

After 36 years of teaching, Miss Rose could read the parents of her students almost as well as the children themselves. She had had her share of not-quite-ready-for parenthood parents, ones whose behavior explained that of their child, ones who were sure that their little darling would grow out of it, whatever _it _was, ones who had no idea how to reach a child. She sometimes spent as much time teaching the parents as their children, but given what she considered her calling, molding the parents came with the job of molding their children.

In her eyes, first grade was a steppingstone to greater things.

Oh no, she wasn't one of those that saw Rhodes scholars from the very beginning, nor was she one who pushed children to be more than they were before they were ready. No. She did, however, provide them with rich experiences that captured their curiosity and parlayed it into organic learning experiences. She only tried to extract from them the very best they could offer.

Yes, yes, she did follow the curriculum and she did give those bean counters in Washington their due with whatever new trend in education had created a rut in their minds. She'd seen her children grow, seen them come out better than they were coming into her first grade and when she saw them later, she knew that she had had an impact.

And she let everyone know that she was providing that key introduction to the next 15+ years of institutionalized education with a rich dollop of the excitement to be had in becoming a lifelong learner.

Key to this was the Spring celebration. Some of the other teachers saw it only as a dog and pony show, but she saw it as an opportunity to demonstrate to the parents and to the community that first graders were getting a fine education at Nathan Hale Academy and they would seek out new ways to recreate the thrill of a new discovery in the years to come.

They would love to learn.

That, as they saw, was the rub. Some of the parents wanted to use the Spring celebration as a chance to prove to the world just how special their child was, or worst, just how nicely they, the parent, handled first grade curriculum.

Just as she couldn't pick and choose which children were enrolled in her class, she couldn't pick the parents, either.

That's why she always studied the parents before making the calls that invited them to be a part of the production team for the Spring celebration. The congressmen and other political types weren't really well suited to playing well with others; she was sure it was something in their DNA. Diplomats and that ilk tended to promise more than they could deliver. Law enforcement types were sticklers for following the rules and well, frankly, children needed some disciple and some leeway to be children.

So when she was combing through the information cards she had had her parents fill out during the first week of school, she came across a pairing that seemed a strong possibility for this year's production.

oOo

Foam board trees arched gracefully over much of the stage, and white silhouettes of plants and animals were lined up along the wall waiting for someone to bring them to life with color.

Overall, she had chosen well.

The Hodgins had been _honored_ to be key members of the production team. She liked that about them almost immediately. When she explained the concept for the show, the Hodgins had offered their particular talents: art and science.

Of course, _she_ was surprised to find such accomplished parents among the three dozen or so from which she had to choose.

They did not need to know that she had planned the Spring celebration with their talents in mind.

No. A foam board forest to be colored by the children with the careful supervision of Miss Angela—she liked that the woman had given the children some latitude with the how of coloring although she had limited the colors to some extent. And she was very good about dividing up responsibilities while still allowing the children artistic license.

And Dr. Jack?

Oh, he was a dream. He vetted her script about the life cycle of a chicken—minus any invitations for it to be the main meal—as well as the growth of flowers and trees. After some discussion with the newest members of her production team, they decided to include a bee for pollination and a vegetable or two to be named later.

The world came to life under Miss Angela's masterful art direction. Trees with arching branches filled with leaves, flowers in dozens of colors masterminded by the children, animals on wooden stands to add their silent witness to the celebration of life, and a paper mache egg from which the chicken would hatch, she truly had a beautiful production.

And the sky. Dr. Jack had insisted on the sky being full with a sun and **clouds**—lots of clouds—and a moon and stars to allow for sleep.

All in all, it was going to be a grand Spring celebration.

With all her preparation and the Hodgins, what could go wrong?

oOo

Yes, she understood that working with children meant that they were prone to childish things: forgetfulness, anxiety, inattention. They were unformed clay that required a gentle hand to form.

But the 36th annual installment of the Spring Celebration set an all-time high water mark for. . . . _Oh, the humanity._

First, the egg—a paper mache and tissue paper egg that Lydia Cisowianka was supposed to break free of as a little chick seemed too much for her and the other children had to pull and punch and prod the egg open only to have Lydia emerge to run screaming into the audience, the little chick forever traumatized by closed-in spaces.

Then that vegetable to be named later? The children had voted for the carrot and tomatoes. Peter Markowitz proceeded to use the vegetables in the most unusual and. . . should she say what she was thinking?. . . the most lascivious way that caused the parents to first titter, then chuckle, then finally, to roar in laughter as the carrot found its way into the most indelicate of positions throughout the run of the show.

Peter Markowitz, thankfully, didn't have a clue why his performance had been so. . . unforgettable.

Oh, and then there was the foam board rainbow that fell from the sky and caught Helen Fischer in the eye giving the child of a chief litigator at a Washington law firm a prize shiner.

In the days that followed the incident, it, too, reflected many of the colors of the rainbow.

And little Frankie Campbell who seemed to be following his own drumbeat, turning left when he should have gone right, singing when he should have been sitting, sitting when he should have been. . . she wondered if she had missed something about that boy.

And Michael Vincent Hodgins.

Michael Vincent.

She knew he was his father's son with a definite flair for the artistic. The young man had added strips of metal to various items on stage so that when the electromagnetic field was turned on, the items were caught in suspension for a moment before he flipped the switch and turned them into a kind of ballet in mid-air, caught between the floor and ceiling.

Like one of those old 16 mm projectors, he flipped the switch causing the tree leaves to fall then to rise back up, defying the natural order of things. And flower petals. Oh they danced from the flowers only to rejoin them and in their return the flowers shuddered in a kind of welcoming dance. And somehow he managed to create movement in the foam board animals; apparently they were just too heavy to actually levitate, but they pulsated and moved, popping up from their positions to fall back to the stage awaiting new instructions.

Leaves rose and fell as the animals twisted and turned, some actually seeming to leap up then find their feet again. Flowers bowed and seemed to expand as the petals began their descent only to be called back again by Michael Vincent's flip of a switch.

Someone had released the bits of confetti that were to signify rain to nourish the life of the plants and animals which were caught in a kind of suspended animation on stage, rising and falling, dancing and moving, and Mrs. Lindauer—sweet, dense Mrs. Lindauer—had signaled the children to sing the finale song perhaps to save some small part of the show from total ruin,

"_From the day we arrive on the planet _

_And blinking, step into the sun _

_There's more to see than can ever be seen _

_More to do than can ever be done. . . ."_

oOo

Angela and Hodgins found Michael Vincent's teacher in tears after the show, Miss Rose clutching a tissue and staring at the stage where the Spring celebration had been both a disaster and a revelation.

"We're sorry," Angela began, the woman's state concerning her. "Michael Vincent never. . . ."

"It was. . . . ," Miss Rose said, her voice barely a whisper. "Oh the humanity."

Angela wasn't so sure. "Are you all right?"

The woman nodded, tears dropping from her cheeks as she simply stood there, shaking her head and simply staring at the now empty stage.

"He'll be in second grade," Hodgins offered. "He'll be out of your hair then."

"No, no, no," the woman repeated the single syllable like a mantra. "Oh no. . . ."

They turned and left the woman, uncertain of how they would talk to Michael Vincent when they got home.

"Whatever you do," Angela said, "don't mention anything to Miss Rose about next year."

"To make her think she's in the clear?"

"Yes," Angela said as she pulled her husband to where Brennan and Booth were waiting, children in hand.

"She'll have a complete nervous breakdown if we tell her she's getting Christine next year."

"And Brennan. . . ."

oOo

**A/N:** The lyrics for those of you not quite Disneyfied are from _The Lion King's _ "The Circle of Life."

I apologize for my dopeyness on this, no Disney pun intended. I sometimes get hung up on the prompts and it takes me a while to come up with something and I'm not sure about this one.


	6. Fear

**46\. Fear**

_**A/N: **__There's foul language ahead. Fair warning. _

oOo

The first one had been built as a prayer.

He'd spent days planning it, almost half a day picking out the best lumber and then wandering around the big box store looking at other things that he could add to the structure to make it that much more special for his little girl. Then for the next few days, he had filled the backyard with noise to suppress the emptiness he felt.

Building that first tree house had been a hope that he'd see them again, that they'd find a way to prove Bones' innocence and the three of them would be a family again.

He told himself the second one was merely a replacement.

That's all it should be, really, a replacement. The Mighty Hut was broken, so toss that away and buy another house. Old house had a tree house; new house should have a tree house.

Simple.

Both he and Bones had wanted one as kids. He wanted a place to play, to escape; she had wanted a laboratory or something like that. That's how they were, two very different people wanting the same thing for very different reasons. But did it really matter?

The Mighty Hut had taken a beating as had their memories of that place and Bones had found them a new house to call home. It was a nice enough place with lots more space and a floor plan that zigged a lot more than it zagged. She'd even retrieved what she could of their things from the living room, the shards of their lives together, some still sporting damage from the assault. But that was the past. They were together again, that's all that mattered. Together.

So, out with the old, in with the new.

oOo

This time he was in and out of the big box store and pulling out the tools from the garage within an hour of Bones and Christine's departure.

Bones had seemed surprised when he told her Christine should go to the Jeffersonian with her while he puttered around the house that day. He almost pushed them out the door as he tried to focus on the project, tried not to see the disappointment in their eyes.

He needed to do this alone.

No calling Wendell for help like he had a couple of summers ago. No calling Sweets. Wendell was too sick and Sweets. . . .

It just hurt too much still to think about Sweets.

The day, one of those autumn days still hanging onto summer's warmth, offered only sunshine and high skies and he found himself shedding his shirt with the growing heat.

He bolted in the brackets he'd ordered into the tree limbs before muscling the braces into place snug to the tree. More than once he paused, the exertion draining some of his initial energy and the breaks seemed to grow longer and longer as he moved through the steps.

Even so, he managed to cut and lay all the boards for the floor by noon and was eating a sandwich and drinking a beer when Bones called to ask him to lunch with her and Christine, but he turned her down.

Again he heard disappointment in her voice, but he could not stop. He was racing against the clock and the voices in his mind.

oOo

He'd mustered out of the Army, more than a little wild, the sudden freedom drawing him to the dangers of Las Vegas where his DNA kicked in. Again and again he rode the highs, luck cresting as he turned $35 into $10,000 before losing it all and tapping out his credit card trying to find his winning streak again.

Gambling had called to him back then, drowned out the voices, gave him the semblance of control with a runaway obsession.

Until the day he met Dr. Temperance Brennan and he'd quit gambling.

Maybe she turned out to be his newest addiction, who knows? But if he had to have an addiction, he couldn't ask for a better one, a softer one, a smarter one, a kinder one.

Love for that woman was one addiction he would never want to 12-step.

Why then, when he'd been shot, beaten and practically drowned, when his heart had been turned inside out by Bones herself, when he'd been rejected, when he'd almost lost Bones more than once since they'd been together—why? Why? Why the hell was it that the voices were calling back, trying to drag him back to crash against his addiction when those other things hadn't?

_Why the fuck was it happening now?_

If Sweets were here—_if Sweets were alive_—maybe he might tell him that he was rebuilding the tree house to drive back the **fear** that kept him awake at night, made him reach for Bones more—_maybe handle her a bit rougher than he used to_—made him scan the racing pages a bit too long, hang around the guys who ran the pools a bit too much, think about playing pool a tad too hard.

The voices clawing at him were voices far too familiar—caged men's tortured voices, his father's gruff fury, plaintive cries of men he had killed.

The mournful pleas of the people he could not save.

Intermixed with these was his own voice taunting him, reminding him of how little he had to give, how much he didn't deserve this life.

How much he hated God for all the crap He'd thrown at them.

oOo

The whine of the circular saw was fading when he heard his name and turned.

Bones was home and staring at the tree house, her eyes bright.

"It's beautiful, Booth. It really is."

She kissed his cheek and hugged him to her, all the approval he needed in her smile. And as they stood there looking at his creation—she probably thinking about the scientific discoveries to come while he saw his daughter at play above the ground in the warm embrace of the tree—the voices within had gone silent; he had held them at bay for just another day.

oOo

**A/N: **_My theory is that Booth is gambling or thinking pretty hard about it these days. His expression after Aubrey's stand against letting him gamble just made me wonder if we were meant to believe Aubrey's worming his way into Booth's heart or if the big guy's struggling with something else. Who knows what evil lurks ahead? Only the producers do. . . ._

_BTW, I like Backstrom and hope it stays around. I'm a little tired of finding a decent show and then losing it because FOX buries it in a wasteland. _


	7. Balcony

**47\. Balcony**

He awoke to the gentle snuffling beside him, the day already begun outside. Sleeping like this was an indulgence what with two little ones at home and being on speed dial for the FBI or Jeffersonian at the very hint of murder.

But this was paradise.

Breathing in the soft scent of the ocean outside their room, he luxuriated in the silence around him. No baby crying, no big sister vying for attention, no phone ringing, no. . . .

"Booth?"

His name came out more mumbly, the first letter disappearing into the pillow as the vowels puffed out the pillowcase just enough for the last letters to reach him.

"Just lying here, enjoying the view."

And he was. Islands of flesh were splayed out from under the blue sheet that was pretty much all Bones had ended up wearing to bed last night.

He poked a toe past the sheet and rubbed it against her exposing more leg. He was similarly attired, just larger islands of flesh on full view.

Certainly not the kind of dress. . . uhm, _undress_ they could pull off at home these days.

There was the baby, little Henry, as full of personality as the man they'd named him after. And Christine. While Henry might not care what he wore or didn't wear to bed, Christine did. He'd already gotten an earful from her relaying the tale of Joey Ditherton's dad's mad rush to answer the call of nature while being _au naturel_ during a sleepover of Joey's five best buddies. It had headlined a day of Kindergarten Scandals until Mikey Leebottom fed the class hamster crayons to see if the jellybean poops would come out in color. In typical fashion, Bones had shrugged off the nudity, pointed out that Joey's dad hadn't done anything wrong, hadn't really shown anything new to the boys present, but Booth didn't much care to be the subject of the 5-year-old rumor mill quite yet.

No. At home it was full dress out of bed, shorts and shirt, but here on vacation? In the sunny, tropical world of. . . .

No, no, no, no, no. No. He wouldn't say the name out loud because he and Bones had done the near impossible and he wasn't going to jinx it by throwing it out into the universe. They were _somewhere_ enjoying the rich, tropical air of _someplace_ beautiful and they'd enjoyed three full days of fun, sun and none: no murder, no dead bodies, no bones of any kind save for the fish he had last night. _And his wife._

No. Death was definitely taking a holiday as were they.

He took another deep breath. If he'd had his druthers, he'd simply laze here in bed or by the pool, enjoy his freedom before heading back to 2 o'clock feedings, spit-up on his suit, toys underfoot, kids crying, screaming above the uproar except for those times when they were whispering at the top of their lungs. Between the V of his feet he could see the ocean beckoning beyond their second floor **balcony **and nothing on their schedule except more fun in the sun.

"You want to order in breakfast?"

He got a mumbled negative. At least that's what it sounded like.

"Go out to eat?"

Again, the response sounded like a no.

He let the subject of food go. They'd had a late dinner and had danced into the early morning hours. Then they'd done a different kind of dancing.

_Horizontal mambo! _

He could understand if Bones needed her sleep over food.

The ocean moved slowly outside, the waters a rich teal that seemed to stretch forever. The calm, the peacefulness—he would have to be a bit quieter when Bones was working on one of her novels if this was one of the perks of writing a best seller. He'd also have to send her publisher a thank you note for popping for a few days in paradise.

Bones shifted positions revealing more island flesh, a different kind of inviting view against the blue of their sheets.

Her eyes popped open and the pale blue seemed brighter, more vibrant here near the equator.

Just then his phone buzzed and he cursed himself for even _thinking_ about their location.

Bones got to the phone first since his pants had ended up on her side of the room. She'd expanded the island view to include several mountain ranges before handing the offending piece of technology his way.

"Booth."

He hadn't checked the caller ID, hadn't wanted to. All he wanted to do was to sound gruff and pissed off and annoyed with any interruption to their. . . .

"Hold on, hold on," he commanded. "Bones, the computer."

It had been the one concession—_well, the second concession_—to technology, Bones' laptop. She needed it to work on her book and keep up with a research project she was supervising, but beyond that, its primary function was _this_.

"_The kids."_

He merely glanced at the island of flesh moving to the table as he tried to find something to cover up his own island nation as he made desperate gestures—something fairly difficult to do while he was pulling his pants on with one hand and trying to find his shirt with the other while holding onto the phone—for her to cover up her own independent state.

She gave him that look, almost bemused, certainly confused that he would need to cover up for a phone call. The computer was placed on the bed, making those noises it did as it was first waking up, while she pulled on her own clothes.

Bones was casually donning his Hawaiian shirt, her pace slow and steady.

He was less than casually losing the phone in his pants.

"Hey, hey Angela," he was saying to the cloth, "hold on, hold on. . . ."

Rescuing the phone, he straightened out the wrinkled mess of his pants and managed to put his legs into the right holes and hold the phone under his chin then scoot into the pants and zip it without losing anything else.

He could be counted on in a crisis.

"You all right there, Booth?"

The way that Angela said it made it sound like she had caught him in the middle of something he shouldn't have been doing in

"Yeah, yeah, yeah," he answered. "Great."

In came out as a growl, but he didn't care even when her face popped up on the computer screen, her smile tinged with that little bit of Angela-ness that made him wonder if she had eyes on their bedroom last night.

Or if Brennan ever talked more than that one night she'd been drunker than. . . .

All thoughts fled as Christine held her little brother up to the screen, his chubby cheeks filling its width. "Hi Daddy, Mommy," Christine squealed as she tried to video bomb Henry who was waving madly.

Of all the things he'd seen those last few days, the magnificent rock pools, the coral reefs, the waterfalls that rushed to their own glory, this was the best thing he'd seen.

And seeing Brennan's face, warm and glowing in the light of their children's faces, he knew it was one thing they could always agree on.

oOo

They walked hand in hand down the sands of the beach, the sun still not at full strength, but promising another perfect day.

Tropical breezes, a sun that wouldn't quit, no where to be, the woman he loved and who loved him right back next to him, everything good at home—what else could he ever want?

"I miss them."

He wasn't sure who had said it, or if they had both said it at the same time, but he knew that the sentiment was right on the money.

"Why did we say we needed to get away?"

That definitely was him.

"You said that we needed to get away from the murders, and the mayhem at home. Given that mayhem means willful damage or violence, I think you were being metaphorical about the difficulty of maintaining a sex life with two. . . ."

"Bones, Bones," he interrupted, the line sounding like him even if he didn't remember it. But Bones could be counted on remembering and having analyzed it twenty ways to Sunday and still following him to paradise because she trusted him about such things.

"I was wrong."

This earned him the confused look followed by the one that told him it didn't matter what he said, she had already made up her mind.

"I kind of miss the mayhem."

Her smile was worth it.

"We can go home?"

"Yeah," he said. "We can go home early."

oOo

Angela and Hodgins understood when they arrived at the airport even though the air temperature outside was decidedly chillier than the tropical air they'd left behind. They understood when he laughed as little Henry greeted him with a full-fledged repeat of his morning's breakfast which landed on the Hawaiian shirt he had won under his winter coat.

And they understood as the two of them seemed far more interested in their kids than retrieving their luggage.

Hand-in-hand with their own Michael Vincent between them, they knew.

They understood a lot about being Booth and Brennan. It was Hodgins who reminded him of that as they were walking to the car, luggage finally in hand.

"Hey man," Hodgins said as he pulled him away from the others, his eyes seeming to be cast on Bones. "It's good you guys came back a couple days early. Who knows how long you would have been stuck down there."

"What are you talking about, Hodgins?"

Sometimes when they talked English, he still didn't quite understand squints.

Hodgins glanced back at Bones who was sporting her own version of Henry's welcome home on her shoulder as she juggled the baby and Christine's updates from stateside.

"Just spit it out, Hodgins. God knows there's been a lot of that already."

The bug man thrust a newspaper into his hands.

On the page was a headline and photo of police on the beach he had just left.

"Three bodies uncovered on beach," the headline read. "Cops suspect murder."


	8. Bonds

**Bonds**

_**A/N: I am cheating and going out of order. C'mon and get me Bonesology police, I dare you coppers. . . .**_

_**. . . Probably been watching too many old movies.**_

**oOo**

This is the story of a cat.

Keep in mind that Seeley Joseph Booth didn't much like cats. He'd seen his share of cats feasting on dead bodies and frankly, he didn't much relish the idea of a cat in his house just waiting for a moment of weakness to take advantage.

The worst thing he'd seen a dog do was run off with an arm bone. Or was it a leg?

Besides, you couldn't really play fetch with a cat or walk it or count on it curling up next to you as you watched a movie. Maybe walking over your newspaper while you were trying to read it or traipsing over the keyboard of your laptop. Cats weren't much good at guarding the house or keeping on eye on the children.

No. Cats pretty much did what they wanted to do when they wanted to do it. Aloof? Maybe. A good companion? Well, the jury was out on that one as far as Booth was concerned. Give him a dog any day.

Dr. Temperance Brennan, "Bones" to her husband, would have pointed out that she was far more partial to dogs than she was to cats. She, too, had seen the effect of a cat's predation on human tissue and bones. Her experience was much more up close than her husband's and sometimes involved examining the fecal matter of cats for additional evidence.

And despite that, she didn't dislike cats.

She just found that cats did cat things and did not object to them following their natural instincts. Not having had a cat of her own as a child, she had had little evidence to examine in order to determine how she really felt about cats in general. She certainly did not think that her experiences with cats outside of a domestic setting would be a fair and rational means by which to make a judgment about a cat in the role of pet.

And while she did not have any rational reasons for feeling that way, she thought that she liked dogs better than their feline counterparts.

Their daughter, Christine Angela Booth, however, loved cats.

She did not know that she loved cats before she loved cats. And technically, she loved a kitten that then grew into a cat and therefore could not be generalized to love all cats.

Her mother would approve that we got those details right.

oOo

The mewling sound came somewhere in the wooded area along the walking path that ran on the backside of their property. The path wound its way through the subdivision, uniting the dozen properties along a single line.

Christine did not know about property lines or walking paths nor had she met all of the neighbors whose properties intersected with the path. She followed her curiosity to the very edge of the invisible line her parents had drawn that held her to her own backyard. Beyond lay the walking path that her father and mother sometimes ran although her father tended to do more running these days.

Her mother spent much more time with Henry, her little brother, and was usually walking with him in the stroller along the path.

The sound that came from the woods did not sound like the wail Henry made when he was hungry or wet or poopy or fussy; the sound was closer to that of Henry when he was babbling in his crib or after he had had milk from her mother's breast.

But that wasn't quite right either, she decided. It seemed to be constant like the wail, but soft like the cooing he made.

Not acquainted with all the possible noises her brother could make—sometimes he did things that surprised her like the first time he smiled at her then blew a raspberryaa—she ran into the house to find her mother.

Her mother had an odd name that her father called her, Bones, that no one else ever used. To Grandpa Max, she was Tempe or honey; to Aunt Angela, she was mostly Sweetie. Others called her Dr. B or Brennan or Dr. Brennan or Bren and she could sometimes figure out who was talking to her mother by how they addressed her.

It was something she would have to teach Henry.

She called her Mommy, _Mommy_. It seemed to fit her far better than the other names.

"Mommy?"

She called-whispered the name throughout the house, previously cautioned that loud voices could wake her brother and given his fussiness that morning at breakfast, she knew better than to raise her voice.

"Yes, honey?"

She found her mother in Henry's room, her laptop open and small slips of paper on the wall next to the changing table. The papers, she knew, were her mother's book. She understood books, enjoyed reading them and having them read to her, but she did not understand why her mother would not read her book out loud to her.

"There's a baby crying in the woods."

She liked that her mother stopped what she was doing and turned to face her. "A baby?"

Describing the sound was easy enough although she mostly pointed out that the sound was much like when Henry was upset and wouldn't stop, but just not that loud.

Her mommy listened, really listened, and offered to take a walk with her to the woods.

"I could use a break."

Of course, they would have to bring Henry.

She did not understand that. Henry had the little cage he slept in and he never got out of it so she wasn't sure why they had to bring Henry with them to the store or Grandpa's or even outside when they all sat in the grass and ate lunch there, but her mommy insisted and she lifted Henry up from the crib and hung him on her and invited her to show her where she had heard the sound.

They walked out to the edge of their property and she knew that her mommy heard the sound, too, when she hurried closer to the wooded area and forgot to hold her hand. She did tell her to stand on their side of the path.

It did not seem fair that Henry got to see what was there before she did.

Her mother emerged from behind a tree holding a dirty pillowcase that had something in it in one hand, and something fuzzy and moving in the other.

It was making the noise.

Taking a few steps closer, she saw exactly what it was.

A baby cat. Or more accurately, a kitten.

oOo

She got to carry the kitten into the house where her mother took it from her and put it on the kitchen counter.

Henry craned his head to see what she was seeing, but Christine had a much better view.

She had already assessed that the kitten was mostly black with patches of white on its mouth area and a slash of white on its chest and a smaller one on its head just above and between the eyes although its paws and nose were pink. Its eyes were big and blue and its ears curled back into its fur. It took a couple of wobbly steps before slipping on the smooth surface and tumbling, but pulled itself up again before plopping down again all the while mewing.

"Christine, could you get your brother's carrier?"

Excited to actually be doing something, she ran to Henry's room for the carrier thinking she should ask her mother if there were more kittens in the pillowcase, but forgetting the question by the time she got back. Her mother had wrapped a kitchen towel around the kitten—he looked a lot like Henry did in all of his blankets, only fuzzier and tinier—and was dipping her little finger in a cup of milk and letting the kitten lick at it.

Of course, Christine wanted to do that, but her mother wouldn't let her.

"Her teeth are like little needles," she pointed out. "It is possible that she could break the skin on you fingers."

Whatever disappointment she felt in not being able to feed the kitten or hold it was allayed by watching its antics as it licked from her mother's finger and then mewed, licked then mewed before wanting to spring itself from captivity.

"Could you get the laundry basket and a towel, honey?"

She practically skipped to the laundry room and got the basket, dumping out her father's striped, smelly socks and grabbing one of the towels from the old house. The return trip was a tad longer since the basket was about as wide as she was tall. But she only hit the doorframe once.

The kitten was nestled into its own cage and although it tried, it really wasn't having any more success than Henry did in escaping his carrier. The kitten finally settled down in the basket and curled itself into a little lump and closed its eyes.

Henry remained watching everything, his right fist pumping the air, his eyes moving between everybody.

She'd already asked on the way back to the house if they could keep the kitten, but her mother hadn't given her an answer. Her mommy talked using words like weaning and nursing and other things she didn't quite understand, and while she peppered her mother with questions, she still wasn't sure she every got an answer to that one, burning question.

So she asked it again.

"We will have to take care of the kitten since she has no mother," her mother replied.

"I can be her mother" was all Christine could say.

And in the mind of a five-year-old, it was pretty much all she could think of.

oOo

The day the kitten came to live with them was the same day that she got to go the vet's office with her mother and Grandpa Max. According to Grandpa Max, no one under four feet tall—six feet according to her father—could stay at home by themselves unless they were at least 12. Her father said that Grandpa Max was wrong, that they had to be at least 30, but Mommy said that Daddy was being hyperbolic.

Whatever that means.

They also got to go to the store to pick out food for the kitten and a box for it to poop and pee and do all the things that Henry did in his diaper.

And they found out that the kitten was a she.

That's why she picked out a purple poopy box for the kitten and why she picked out a green bowl for its food and a yellow bowl for its water because her Mommy said that girls of any kind should not be gender stereotyped by a color.

She didn't know what that meant; she just liked the colors.

Christine did get to hold the kitten in her lap on the way home from the store. It was in a little carrier that was soft like her pillow and she could play her fingers along the openings and be rewarded by a lick from the kitten or the gentle vibration of its purr.

It may have been the moment she fell in love with the kitten.

The kitten was given the run of the laundry room, and she watched as it made its first tentative steps in its newest home, batting at the small plastic ball she had insisted it needed. Again and again the ball tinkled as the kitten swatted at it, following behind in a drunken gait until exhausted by its effort, it simply plopped down on the rug her mother had laid out for it, and closed its eyes.

If she wasn't in love with the kitten before, she was in love with it then.

oOo

To a child, the joy in something can be easily forgotten. How many parents spend countless hours– _and dollars_—looking for that special toy only to have the child find more enjoyment in the box it came in?

Christine's father hoped that his little girl would lose interest in the kitten so they could take it to a shelter and let someone who really liked felines have it. Her mother pointed out that there were countless things that could happen to the kitten before it matured and that their daughter might have to deal with another loss, not necessarily on the same scale as Sweets or Pops, but certainly one that would cause her pain.

Children don't always understand the words, but like many children, Christine understood the tone of her parents' conversation. Her mother had smiled and cooed to the kitten in much the same way as she did with Henry, so she thought that boded well for keeping the creature. But her father was being more difficult.

He really didn't like cats.

But as Grandpa Mac had pointed out, once a child **bonds** with the animal, it's very difficult to break their connection. In the end, they talked to her about responsibility and helping out, and it was similar to the talk they had had with her with they brought Henry home from the hospital, so she figured that it meant her parents would do what they were doing for Henry and she would watch.

She didn't have to change Henry's diapers or carry him around until he fell asleep or get up in the middle of the night to give him more food, so she thought she wasn't going to have to do those things for the kitten.

Well, she hoped she wouldn't have to. The first time the kitten pooped in the purple pan, it did smell pretty bad.

oOo

So this is the story of the cat that came to live with the Booth family. As you can tell, it really isn't the entire story of a cat. There's more, of course. The usual things like the time Christine thought she lost the kitten but it was really sleeping inside her daddy's shoe, or the time it spit up on papers that were important for her mommy's work or the time. . . well, you get the idea. Every day the kitten did kitten things until it got to be a cat and then it would do the same things but only slower. When she would get tired of doing those things the kitten, then cat, would either eat or rumble around in the purple box or sleep except for the times that Christine's daddy would pull it into his lap and watch a ball game on TV and try to feed it popcorn, but since felines don't like popcorn it would bat it around like a soccer ball or a hockey puck.

He would laugh even though he said he did not like cats.

And that is the story of Gretzky, the cat.

The name? Oh, Christine didn't really give the kitten that name; it came from Grandpa Max. He said that Christine's father would very much like the name and the kitten if she gave her that name, but don't tell him that he said so.

_Finally_, this is the story—_well, part of the story_—of a cat.

The end.

oOo

_**A/N:**__ Thank you, thank you, thank you to all the readers who favorited or alerted or took the time to send a little note of encouragement. _

_I wrote the summary and was just winging it when I mentioned cats and then I decided that it would be fun to put a cat among the canaries, so to speak. I had no plan in writing any of these except to churn out a story now and then and alleviate some of the hiatus hell. What's kind of nice is that I start looking back on the old episodes or hunting down summaries online to help make sure that I'm at least mostly true to the canon of the show and then I get a little lost reading or watching when I really should be doing something else entirely. _

_Well, many of you understand. _


	9. Breaking

**Breaking **

_**A/N: In fear of stirring up trouble. . . .**_

oOo

Daisy had found it in his papers, squirreled away with notes on serial killers and cults, those papers perhaps meant for a book he would write someday. It wasn't much, just a single sheet of paper from an impromptu meeting with a patient, nothing like the set of transcripts from other sessions with patients over the years that went on for pages.

And Daisy, being Daisy, had given her the note.

Time seemed to stop as she stared at it, tried to take it all in even though the words were simple and straightforward in a way that Sweets could sometimes be: Zack never killed anyone.

oOo

Sliding the note in front of him along the surface of the wooden table, she did not consider the moral or ethical constraints under which Lance Sweets might have been regarding the information, she only wondered at the truth which had been allowed to lie untouched for all these years. Had she let her own emotional upheaval at the time blind her to some fact or bit of evidence that supported this? Was this some kind of psychological conjecture that Sweets had fabricated from the interviews he had conducted with Zach? Or was Sweets going to try to test her reaction to this information as he had used Booth's death to test her, but decided against it in fear of what Booth might do to him?

But all questions fled as Dr. Zach Addy looked up at her, his face rounded by inactivity and the medication they were giving him, his eyes steady.

"You weren't supposed to know the truth."

oOo

She held the secret close to her heart as she had held other secrets over the years. Each one had carried a reason to hold it secure until it needed to be revealed, and some would never find light because the reasons would never be strong enough.

This one lay in that murky grey area she did not understand.

So that afternoon when the question refused to be silenced, she made her way to a familiar spot and put the query to him long before she even slid onto the bar stool.

"You're still intense even with marriage."

It took her a bit longer to read him, a bit longer to understand that he was teasing her. But she wasn't in the mood for teasing.

"I need to understand."

The upturn of his lips straightened and he stepped toward her. Behind him one of the beer signs flickered. "This is the kind of thing that you should ask that husband of yours."

Aldo Clemens continued to polish the glass in his hand, but his eyebrows were knit together and his eyes had not left hers.

"I need to understand," she repeated. "I can't go to Booth. . . ."

"Because he put him in there." This time he put down the glass and dropped the towel next to it. He blinked several times before he continued. "If someone is falsely imprisoned, you know what would happen. Knowing Booth, he wouldn't let that stand." He drew out each word as if he were testing it. "But why would someone who is falsely imprisoned want to remain imprisoned? Why would someone choose that kind of life?"

She felt impatient with his repetition of her question, but she tried to hold back any reaction. Some people took longer to process information and she needed Aldo's help interpreting Zack's actions, it was that simple. It was exactly the kind of information she was bad at understanding and under the circumstances, she felt uncomfortable taking it to Angela and she needed more information before taking it to Booth.

She waited. He leaned in.

"And you've asked the falsely imprisoned person?"

"He's actually confined to a psychiatric facility."

"You've asked him?"

"Yes."

The eyebrows went up. "And?"

"He doesn't want me to act on the information."

This was met with some silence as he seemed to be processing everything.

"Then why pursue it?"

She realized that the question wasn't meant to stop her, but challenge her to define why she was still pursuing something that Zack clearly did not want her to follow up on.

"He's brilliant. It would be. . . ."

"Criminal?"

"To allow his intelligence to languish in a psychiatric facility would be not be rational."

The dark brown eyes, so much like Booth's in their kindness, never looked away. "He is your friend and you want him to have a life outside of the facility."

She nodded.

"Moral quandaries are far more difficult to tackle than deciding how many kegs of beer to order for the month."

She ignored the comment about his beer supply knowing that sometimes people talked about other things while formulating the actual answer. Again she waited.

He breathed out of his nose, a short, sharp exhale. "Besides paying a penance for what he did, for how his actions caused the death of another man, perhaps he feels that his incarceration serves a higher purpose."

oOo

Her life's work had been to unlock the secrets etched into bones and later to give voice to the voiceless, to right the injustices condoned by others, but this?

_This_?

The arguments careening in her mind could not be silenced, so she made her way to the kitchen for something to drink, taking her cup to the little outdoor dining area as if the night air might keep the noise of her thoughts from waking her husband and daughter.

Spring had pushed back winter, and the coat she had wrapped around herself shielded her from any chill left in the air, but all she felt was the cold hard truth of a person wedded to a lie that now defined them.

She understood the rational behind such lies, had lived with the lies of her parents, but she could not escape the ineffable sadness for what Zach had lost in accepting blame far greater than he deserved.

The rumble of the sliding door announced that Booth had found her, but she did not turn to greet him, only stared into her tea as if it might give her answers.

"Baby keeping you up?" he asked as slid into the seat beside her.

"No," she said, her hand going to her bulging belly. "No, he's fine."

"So? Is it something with Christine?"

She shook her head and laid out the story, the facts and futility erupting from her. Bu the time she had finished, Booth had somehow wrapped her in his arms.

"We can go to Caroline and reopen. . . ."

"He doesn't want that, Booth. He wants to stay there."

"If we reopen the case, we can buy some time to convince Zach that it's better for him outside than inside with the other crazies."

His voice was soothing, but her heart, so crushed by Zach's crimes at the time, felt like it was **breaking** all over again.

"Caroline can probably work on some kind of deal based on the time he served in the loony bin and we can find him. . . .'

She heard Booth's suggestions, meant to reassure her, but she wasn't really listening.

"I was Zach," she said, breaking through the flow of Booth's words. "I was like him. If someone hadn't helped me find a different life, to look at the world differently, I might have been like him."

"No," Booth said as he held her tighter, "no. Zach was, well, weird. You? You were this brilliant squint that just needed to get out into the world more and believe that you had a heart that was open to it. And you're tough. Your bones aren't made of the regular bone stuff, they're reinforced with titanium steel because you would never have bent to Gormogan's influence."

"That's not rational, Booth."

"Yeah, it is," he countered. "You got to be tough, learned how to defend yourself. I've seen you deck guys twice as big as you. Zach never had that." He kissed the side of her head. "You might have the same kind of brain power, but it all came from different factories, or you got different model numbers."

Booth was being Booth, his analogies confusing, but somehow she understood the meaning behind them.

She sighed. "So what do we do?"

He shifted, drawing her even closer. "We just take one step at a time, Bones. One step at a time and see where that takes us."

oOo

**A/N:** Before anyone shoots me, I am not one of those people who has clamored for years for Zach Addy to be brought back to the show. That said, I do want some closure on that story just as I want to know what's on page 187, what does 4:47 mean and how the hell did the Gravedigger drag Booth out a window and down a fire escape. The show isn't ruined for me if they never answer those questions, I will still love the show and what they've done over the years, but I think something can come out of Sweets' demise that can tie up that loose thread.

I understand why the show hasn't revisited Zach and I understand why it is a touchy subject for many fans who have had to endure either the years without their favorite squint or those who have had to endure the cries for Zach's return to the point that it is numbing.

Brennan has dealt with the secrets of her parents' secret lives and I think it would be interesting if she were to face another life-altering secret like that of Zach's. The show is about her journey to be a greater part of the world and it would be interesting to see how she might deal with his secret given all that she has gone through.

Anyway, I might revisit this when a theme inspires a solution. Again, thank you for reading and reviewing and pressing the button below and providing some input.


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